Here is another repertoire-based clarinet recital disc, this one comprising early-20th-century Italian works for clarinet and piano. Even several decades in, of course, instrumental and orchestral music generally took a back seat to vocal music in Italy (the “Roman” trilogy of Respighi being among the most prominent early exceptions), so clarinetist del Grazia, who holds a master’s degree in music theory in addition to the D.M. (presumably in performance) from Indiana University, and who wrote his own refreshingly cogent and informative program notes, must be given credit for his ingenuity in constructing the program. Much of the factual information given below is taken from his notes.

All of this music is distinctly conservative in musical language; then again, with the exception of del Grazia’s own piece, all were composed by 1945, before the Darmstadt influence took hold and composers such as Nono, Berio, and Dallapiccola began working in much more experimental languages. The earliest piece is Giacomo Setaccioli’s c. 1921 Sonata, a fairly appealing, late-Romantic-sounding work, if not an especially distinctive one; it is vaguely programmatic, its movements being labeled “Afternoon,” “Nocturne,” and “Dawn.” The rapid middle section of the second movement and the finale offer their share of technical challenges.

Mario Pilati’s Étude was a 1930 adaptation of a piece originally written as a vocalise at the request of a Paris Conservatoire professor. It is accordingly modest in its demands on performer and listener alike, and at 3:20 would make an attractive program-filler or encore.

Nino Rota’s Sonata, written in 1945 after the composer had fled to the U.S., is generally run-of-the-mill stuff, pleasant enough if not nearly as memorable as his scores for the Godfather movies.

The most substantial piece here is the Sonata of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, also written in America in 1945. It, too, is unabashedly tonal, but particularly in its first movement has a dark, mysterious quality that causes it to stick in the mind’s ear in a way the rest of the program does not. The second movement is a technically demanding Scherzo; the last two movements are titled “Lullaby” and “Rondò alla Napolitana.” This piece deserves to be better known; yet the present recording appears to be the only one currently available in the U.S., as is true of all the music on this disc.

Del Grazia’s own little Tarantella, the actual encore to this program, was composed specifically for this purpose. The composer/performer writes that it “exploits the clarinet’s agility, calling for extremes of register, staccato technique, and circular breathing.” He certainly knew for whom he was writing, but at under two minutes the work’s technical difficulty-to-duration ratio is so small that I don’t envision other clarinetists picking it up in great numbers.

Del Grazia plays with a secure, pleasantly reedy—if not always perfectly focused—tone, somewhat more attractive on the darker A clarinet called for in the Rota Sonata. He manages all the music’s technical challenges handily. All in all, this is a pleasant disc that could find a niche in quite a few collections, including your reviewer’s.

Customer Reviews

Sign up now for two weeks of free access to the world's best classical music collection. Keep listening for only $19.95/month - thousands of classical albums for the price of one! Learn more about ArkivMusic Streaming